


Distinction

by Fritillary



Category: Pet Shop of Horrors
Genre: Childhood Memories, Gen, Mentions of Myth & Folklore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-15 18:06:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18674785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fritillary/pseuds/Fritillary
Summary: "There is no moon rabbit anymore."





	Distinction

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: #133 Bias (tamingthemuse) - [observer bias] - when the interpretation of a result is reliant upon and affected by the interpreter. 
> 
> Slight spoilers for Chapter 4 of Volume 8: The Flowers, the Detective, and the Detective's Little Brother. 
> 
> The conversation between Chris and D is directly quoted from the offical Toykopop English manga translation of the aforementioned chapter.

The D family had seen many things. Even in their last few generations civilizations had risen, become wealthy and powerful, and then collapsed back into dust. Whether suddenly, in war or disaster, or slowly through famine and disease, the humans who inhabited the earth had come and gone, leaving only their increasingly destructive influences behind them. The scarred land was then allowed to heal, little by little, before the next generation of mankind tore into her once again. The old Count D lent against the smooth cypress tree, its branches spreading thickly and abruptly from the trunk like a deep green parasol above his head, and tilted his gaze up to look at the one thing had barely changed about the world since long before he could recall. Far above him, the first stars glittered in the darkening sky, just as they had done for millennia, and the full moon glided into view. The consistency, when about him everything else rotted under human hands, brought a rare sincere smile to the Count's lips. 

He remembered nights, long ago, when he taught his grandson the names of the stars in every language he knew, and the child drank in the information with delight, and begged for more, just as his father had done before him. The old Count had feared that his beloved grandson would become twisted in the same way; this yearning for knowledge, and so, instead of teaching about the world as it was, the Count had searched his memory for tales of what the world could have been; the stories of earth told a thousand years before in emperor's courts when he himself had sat entranced on golden cushions and the flowers weaved their heady perfumes into the air. 

 

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Far away, in a familiar petshop, the youngest D sipped his cup of ginseng tea and remembered the tales his grandfather had told and repeated them for his own young charge.

"Chris, look closely; doesn't the surface of the moon resemble the shadow of a rabbit pounding a cake? In ancient China, they called the moon rabbit 'Gyokuto'. They believed he was powdering medicine for the people on earth. In Japan, on the other hand, they believe a race of immortals rule the moon. They say that one of them, Princess Kaguya, shines her beautiful light on the earth to lead men astray."

After Grandfather had left on his tours, searching for evermore exotic and rare 'pets', D had obediently followed his wishes and served as the petshop's owner, bearing his ancestor's mission of returning the earth to its true masters, one wretched human at a time. And yet, whenever he could, he had paused his endless revenge and indulged in his old love for stories; learning the ones his grandfather had not told him and refreshing others in his mind. Stories of love and life and death and tragedy, the tales dreamed up by humans to explain (often to their children: the askers of the eternal question "why") the things they did not truly understand. He heard of how rains of fire were retribution from an angry god; how the stones had been granted eternal life because, unlike all other things, they had no children; and how mermaids lured sailors to their deaths and bloodthirsty werewolves roamed deep forest under the light of the full moon. 

"Count, is there still a bunny on the moon?"

"No. 35 years ago three brave Americans landed on the surface of the moon... and killed him. There is no moon rabbit anymore, nor is there a race of immortals, or a beautiful princess. On that day mankind lost them forever."

Mankind believed in giants and fairies and elves and greater powers once. But slowly, these beliefs had faded away, and science had taken its place, explaining what had before been an indelible mystery: the rains of fire were erupting volcanoes caused by movement in the earth's molten core; mermaids and werewolves only humans or other natural creatures mistaken in the dark forests or the depths of a raging sea storm (and D knew that half the mermaids seen were indeed just that; real merfolk were far too bright to go anywhere near the violent and self-destructive humans if they could possibly help it). In their struggle to understand, humans had corrupted what they sought to explain, turned it into something else entirely, and D found he could only watch with sorrow as mankind separated themselves from Mother Nature through their desire to know everything about it. Would they stop once they knew? D doubted that humans would be happy before they had examined all they could, even if it meant crushing it to worthless dust in the process, even if there was no going back. Ignorance was indeed both blissful and precious, if only humans were to relinquish the suffocatingly possessive grip they held on their planet; a child's ignorance doubly so, for it was ignorance without pretense. 

"Hey, Count... Maybe... the bunny just found a good place to hide."

"Perhaps you’re right. For all we know, the bunny, Princess Kaguya and all the immortals are standing outside, and gazing up at us, together."


End file.
